National Underwriter recently interviewed Jeffrey Grange, head of Management, Liability & Professional Lines for QBE, to get his views on the state of the market for professional liability coverages, the impact of increasing regulatory burdens and the evolving risks facing companies and the insurers that cover them.

Q: You've served in various capacities in management liability and professional lines underwriting areas for more than 25 years. How has this line evolved in that time in terms of exposures, and what are some of the greatest exposures that executives need to be insured against these days?

Jeffrey Grange: The pace of change has been remarkable; 60% of the economy is represented by the service sector. Further still, so much of the “new” economy is information based and revolves around data, the derivation and dissemination of content. “Services” and “service” providers are not only proliferating at an exponential pace but their business models are entirely transformed because their services are increasingly delivered by technology. The convergence of the traditional errors & exposures of service providers and their technological enablement–including content dissemination, media liability, technology errors & omissions, privacy violations, network security breaches and intellectual property rights disputes coupled with the rapid and long term secular growth trends in these sectors of the economy amplifies existing risks and creates new exposures. The risks and exposures facing customers are changing. This creates challenge for underwriters to identify and effectively underwrite and price these exposures. This complex and morphing environment is the jumping off point for product innovation as leading underwriters stay current and relevant as solution providers in the customers in the risk mitigation and risk transfer strategies.